User:Bohye Woo/First Project Proposal

FIRST PROJECT PROPOSAL

What do you want to make? What do I start with?

I would like to investigate on (how colonialism is related with) digital labour by forensicating crime scene on the web.

I would like to meticulously delve on what is a digital form of labour, what different types of digital capital exist, what is the relationship between value and digital capital, how does it related with digital labour— would be sub-research.

what is a infrastructure around digital labour?

I believe there is a digital colonialism happening in the web, and by using my Korean background and history, the fact that Korea was colonized by Japan back betwen 1910s and 1940s, I would like to find out some evidences in which I can apply to the digital world.

Going back to the method of forensic, I would like to being in a detective mode, crawing the web, writing a forensic report.

My thesis will be an investigation report where I reveal several crime scenes. It is a digital crime scene in the digital world that free labour is being used in a different way. So, being a detective to reveal the cases that are being ignored/shadowed without knowing it/illegally used/ from users. And trying to find digital footages, traces, provisos that are hidden on internet/web.

My project will be a platform in which you can experience different kinds of digital labour I will introduce.

How do you plan to make it?

0, Trying to define what is digital labour -> A new digital glossary
1. Doing researches on Colonialism, what was happening during the colonial period, why did it happened.
2. Doing researches on the digital form of labour, what types of different digital labour, capital, value exists in the web.
3. Reading on the idea of colonialism, labour, capital, capitalism, Data colonialism, Maxism...More to come.
4.Thinking about how I'm going to prototype it. Small sets of experiments that revealstthe idea of digital labour?
5. Make a different study case, aka crime scene, and investigate on it. The investigation might lead me to start on a new study case. So I can image that my work could be a series of investigation that are linked all together under the subject of digital labour.

What is your timetable?

20 September — Read read and read, dream about what I read, write down, think about what I want to prototype.
27 September — Be precise of what I want to make..
04 October — Graduate proposal done + Thesis outline

Early Dec — Deadline First Chapter
Mid Feb — Deadline First Draft Thesis
Early March — Deadline Second Draft thesis (texts to 2nd readers)
Mid March — Deadlines Second readers' comments
Early April — DEADLINE THESIS

Who can help you and how?

Aymeric + Andre + Micheal + Amy + Clara + Steve + Marlous + ..... I don't know yet how specifically I could ask for help.

Relation to previous practice My interest has been slowly built since last Special Issue 8 where I was working on the subject of dependency on a network, infrastructure, and decentralization. The idea of being dependent or independent on a web brought me to think of how data is being used/exploited from a third party, and used to make a profit.

On the Special Issue 9, I got interested on the labour part of pirate library where the labour tend to be invisible intentionally or unintentionally. My project will be an extension of this research, more in a broad sense in the web.

Relation to a larger context

Capitalism
Data colonization
Capital
Colonialism
Free software
Authorship
Dependency
Decentralization
Network

References

— platform+capitalism+nick+srnicek
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=platform+capitalism+nick+srnicek — Data colonialism by Nick Couldry
— The Internet as Playground and Factory Edited ByTrebor Scholz
Data worker: https://monoskop.org/log/?p=21038
https://www.algolit.net/index.php/Data_Workers https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/algolit/mundaneum
— adam smith's the division of labor
— karl marx's transformation of human labor into its own enslavement
— http://networkcultures.org/blog/publication/flying-money-2018-investigating-illicit-financial-flows-in-the-city/

To-do

— Make a small gesture/prototype on my first research/interest (Make a small study case in the form of crime scene: gathering some materials on the web and find a hidden labour, and analyse what kind of labour it is? )

— Annotating on readers